Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015-2017 - S for Job Scott

Job Scott was born in 1751 at Providence, Rhode Island, the eldest child of Quakers John and Lydia Scott. His mother died when he was ten and from the age of fifteen he says that he got into loose company, learned to dance and delighted in playing cards. He later felt a need for religion but was more drawn to the Baptists than the Quakers. As he said, 'Friends meetings were oftener held in silence than suited my itching ear. I loved to hear words, began to grow inquisitive...and the Baptist preachers filled my ears with words and my head with arguments and distinctions, but my heart was little or not at all improved by them.'

Moses Brown

Eventually he returned to Friends, was convinced and appeared as a minister in 1774 at the age of twenty three. At this time he was employed as a school teacher and also worked as a tutor to the children of Moses Brown, whose wife had recently died. Moses came from a Baptist family but was impressed by Job's example and eventually became a Quaker. The two men worked together for the causes of abolition and peace.


In 1780 Job Scott married Eunice Anthony and the couple had six children. Job was often away from home travelling widely in the ministry and sometimes wrote encouraging poems for his wife to read while he was away. His early experience taught him to be wary of speaking too much in his ministry at home and he frequently felt himself required to give an example of silence when visiting elsewhere.

It is possible that Job also practised as a doctor, although this may have been more of an amateur interest. In a letter written at the end of his life he directs that neither of his sons should be encouraged to become physicians and that his medical books should be disposed of. He speaks with feeling of the dangers of going beyond a little general knowledge of medicine, getting out of one's depth and meddling in dangerous cases.

In 1791 his wife died and in 1792 Job felt called to travel in the ministry to Europe. At the end of that year he set sail from Boston and eventually landed in France at Dunkirk where he met with Robert Grubb, an Irish Friend. From there Job went to England, holding meetings in Kent before proceeding to London and then on to Welsh Yearly Meeting in Carmarthen. Next he went to Bristol and back to London for Yearly Meeting there.

Ballitore Meeting House

Job then travelled to Liverpool and took ship for Ireland, visiting many meetings in that country before attending the national Half Years Meeting in Dublin. He was taken ill with smallpox while staying at the house of Elizabeth Shackleton at Ballitore and in spite of all that doctors and nursing care could do he died in November 1793 at the age of forty-two and was laid to rest in the Quaker graveyard there.

A few years after his death Job Scott's edited journal of his travels in the ministry was published.  Later in the 19th century a fuller version and the rest of Job's writing was published by the Hicksites in an attempt to claim him posthumously as one of their own. The Evangelical faction certainly found Job's writing, with its emphasis on waiting in silence for the promptings of the Inward Light, unsound in doctrine. However the journal, with its reflections on the religious life and on the proper upbringing of children, was very influential and remained popular. Indeed, along with John Woolman, Job Scott is one of the few representatives of 18th century Quakerism to be found in Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker Faith and Practice.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2014 - Z for Zzzzz (Sleeping in Meeting)

The possibility of falling asleep during meeting for worship has been seen as something to be guarded against from the early days of the Quaker movement. As early as 1656 George Fox writes in one of his epistles, 'All Friends everywhere take heed of slothfulness and sleeping in your meetings, for in so doing you may be bad examples to others'.

One charitable excuse given by a modern commentator for being overtaken by sleep is that 'Drowsiness at these meetings may have arisen from people who led physically active lives, usually outdoors or in unheated rooms, having an opportunity to sit at ease in a room which was probably heated by a fireplace'. Perhaps another reason was that they, like the young Samuel Bownas in the late 1690s, were at meeting because it was expected of them rather than because of their own conviction.

Throughout the 18th century travelling ministers and other 'weighty Friends' urged Quakers to guard against sleep both for their own sake and to avoid giving a bad impression to others. A letter written to New Jersey Friends in 1704 advises 'Friends all take heed of sleeping, sottishness and dullness in Meetings for it is an illsavoury thing to see one sit nodding in a Meeting,and so to lose the sense of the Lord and shamefacedness both; and it grieveth the upright and watchful, that wait upon the Lord, to see such things, and for the Priests, people and others that come into your Meetings, to see you that come together to worship God and wait upon him, to have fellowship in His Spirit, for you to sit nodding is a shame and unseemly thing.’

In 1776 Catherine Payton Phillips, writing to Friends in Ireland after travelling among them, condemns drowsiness in meeting in no uncertain terms but also suggests a remedy. 'It is not improbable that the drowsiness beforementioned may, in some, proceed from eating and drinking more than nature requires; this most certainly unfits the mind for spiritual exercises; for, when the body is still, the mind sinks into rest. Under this consideration, it becomes the duty of all to watch, lest their table becomes a snare to them, and wine and strong drink be so indulged in their feasts, as to unfit them for Communion with God, and the participation of the New Wine of his Kingdom. And, young People should, especially, be careful not to indulge themselves in the use of much wine, etc. lest the prevelance of custom grow upon them as they advance in years.'

Is sleeping in meeting something which we should still worry about today? It certainly still happens as we relax in our usually well-heated meeting rooms. Indeed Ben Pink Dandelion in his 1986 book The Quakers; a Very Short Introduction states ‘In terms of the inward, studies show that Friends are engaged in many different kinds of activity, often in parallel or tandem in any one Meeting. They may be praying or praising or seeking communion or guidance, thinking or sleeping.'  

So is sleep just one of our options or should we guard against it? Perhaps if we look upon this drowsiness as a metaphor as well as an actuality it might help us to address the question. As Jacob Ritter, a 19^th century minister, put it, 'Friends, we must try to keep one another awake, or else we shall lose the life. To lose the life would be losing everything; the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.'

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 44 - V for Joan Vokins and the Vale of the White Horse

Jane and Joan Bunce were born in Charney Bassett (then in Berkshire) in the 1630s, the daughters of a yeoman farmer. Both were pious women, much influenced by the religious turmoil of their times and looking for a faith they could commit themselves to.

In the 1660s both women married and both became Quakers. Jane's husband, Oliver Sansom, was convinced before their wedding and they became Friends together. Joan on the other hand had been married to Richard Vokins of West Challow for some time before her convincement and she did not rest until she had brought her husband and children with her into the Quaker fold.

The White Horse at Uffington

The area where they lived, the Vale of the White Horse (named for the prehistoric figure on the downs above Uffington), became a thriving centre for Quakerism despite continuing persecution. Oliver Sansom was imprisoned many times and his wife's administrative skills kept both his drapery business and the Quaker meeting going during his absence. Joan Vokins's gifts lay in a more prophetic direction and she took care of the spiritual needs of Friends, both keeping them up to the mark and encouraging them.

This was the period of the Wilkinson-Story separation when John Wilkinson and John Story spoke out against the formation of women's meetings and in favour of meeting safely behind closed doors rather than publicly. The Vale of the White Horse was much troubled by this Quaker heresy and Joan Vokins spoke out strongly against it. On one occasion she even turned back from a foreign missionary journey in order to make sure that her home meeting did not give way to persuasion from local supporters of Wilkinson and Story.

Although she was the mother of six children and had far from robust health Joan Vokins travelled in the ministry far and frequently.In 1680 she sailed to America, arriving in New York in May. She visited Long Island, Rhode Island, Boston, East and West Jersey and Pennsylvania. Hoping to return to England she went back to New York to find a passage but found herself suddenly called to visit Barbados. As she tells it, on the way to Barbados 'the Lord put it into my heart to visit Friends in the leeward islands' and the boat was driven there against the captain's will. Trying again to go to Barbados she felt another call to visit Nevis and the boat duly changed direction of its own volition! When eventually Joan reached Barbados she found many Quakers who had been transported from England and she held meetings for them sometimes two or three times a day.

Charney Manor, Charney Bassett

Joan returned to England, landing in Dover in June 1681 and spending some time preaching in Kent before returning home. She continued to travel extensively, encouraging persecuted Friends, but when the prisons opened and Quakers were freed in 1686 Joan went to Ireland. Here, though very weak, she went up and down the country for a full year. In 1690 she attended Yearly Meeting in London and having been refreshed by meeting with Friends turned back towards home. This time though her weakness overcame her and she died 'having finished her course and kept the faith' while staying in Reading in 1690. In 1691 Joan's brother-in-law Oliver Sansom published her autobiography and letters under the title God's Mighty Power Magnified: As Manifested and Revealed in His Faithful Handmaid Joan Vokins.

Quakerism still flourishes in the Vale of the White Horse and Joan is remembered in her home village at Charney Manor, now a Quaker retreat centre, where a room is named after her.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 13 - G for the three Sarah Grubbs

One of the problems of researching Quakers of the past is their habit of marrying within other Quaker families and of using only a small stock of first names. This often leads to a situation where contemporaries are given, or acquire on marriage, the same name. For the sake of clarity therefore this week I am going to try to distinguish between the three Sarah Grubbs. Sarah Pim Grubb (1746 – 1832), Sarah Tuke Grubb (1756-1790) and Sarah Lynes Grubb (1773 – 1840) were connected both by time and place.

Sarah Pim was born in 1746 at Mountrath in Ireland, the eldest of the fifteen children  of John and Sarah Pim. Her father was a rich Dublin wool merchant and she was related through both her parents to most of the prominent Quaker families in Ireland. In 1771 the family moved to Tottenham in Middlesex where they  mixed in fashionable Quaker society in and around London. Writing to friends in Ireland Sarah noted that the English Quakers loved finery whereas the Irish retained the ‘plain’ dress but entertained lavishly. 

River Suir at Clonmel

Sarah moved back to Ireland in 1778 when she married John Grubb (1737-1784)  a flour miller of Anner Mills, Clonmel, co. Tipperary and entered the circle of wealthy Quaker families who controlled Clonmel's milling industry in its golden age. Although some in this circle lived, as the visiting American Quaker William Savery said, ‘like princes of the earth’  the Grubbs chose to live plainly and their comfortable home, Anner Mills, for years provided hospitality to numerous travelling Quaker ministers. 

Main Street Clonmel

Their happy marriage was ended prematurely with John Grubb's death from overwork in 1784. At this point  Sarah chose to take her husband's place and run the mills herself, with the support of her brother Joshua, a prominent Dublin banker and her sister Elizabeth Pim. She entrusted the care of her five small daughters to Sarah Lynes who came from London in 1787 and of whom I shall say more later. Sarah Pim Grubb found that business, and contact with the country people, raised her spirits. She made a success of the business through strict integrity, and a policy of always using cash when buying in, and selling at low rates rather than giving credit. 

Possessed of great clearness of mind and a powerful character, Sarah Pim Grubb was also a person of warm human sympathy and benevolence. She did what she could to alleviate widespread local misery caused by poverty and drunkenness, and she was quick to sen aid to those afflicted by the 1798 rising. She was much concerned with education and helped to fund Newtown School in Waterford. This combination of success in business and social concern won her the nickname the Queen of the South. She died, leaving a fortune of over £100,000, at Anner Mills in 1832 and was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Clonmel.
 

Sarah Lynes was born in 1773 in Wapping, London and attended the Friends school in Clerkenwell. From here, at the age of fourteen, she went to Ireland, as I have said, to look after the children of Sarah Pim Grubb of Anner Mills, Clonmel. While in this household she experienced the stirrings of a call to the ministry and first spoke in meeting, with great reluctance, when she was seventeen. Four years later, in 1794, she was recorded a minister by Co. Tipperary MM and began to travel in the ministry in Ireland, encouraged and supported by her employer. In 1797 she returned to London, started a school with her sister and continued her extensive travels. She spoke whenever she felt called, often in the open air and in all weathers one result of which was an increasing deafness.

A Quaker Wedding by Percy Bigland, 1896

It was thus as an experienced and seasoned minister that, in 1804, she married John Grubb of Clonmel, the nephew of her old employer. This became evident during the ceremony in Isleworth meeting house. As one of her friends, Elizabeth Dudley, wrote, ‘Sally like a notable woman, went into the [ministers] gallery after the ceremony and was largely engaged to the people, many not Friends being present; she then took her seat beside John again...’ The marriage was a happy one as John had nothing but admiration for his Sally’s gifts and supported her throughout the nearly forty years they had together. They went to live in Ireland for fifteen years but then Sarah felt that God was calling her back to England so they and their four children returned.

In her family circle Sarah was characterised as ‘highly humourous’ but this side of her was seldom shown in her public minister’s role. Hers was a prophetic gift and she was often moved to warn against what she saw as the dangers to the Society of Friends in a very trenchant and outspoken manner. As a Quietist she saw herself as acting only as a mouthpiece for God’s word, not speaking in her own words or will. The targets of her strictures  were mainly the Evangelical party led by J.J. Gurney, who she saw as too much given over to worldliness and money-making to be proper leaders for Quakers. She also feared that their greater emphasis on education  for ministry and on Bible study would lead them to depend more on their own intellect than on patient waiting for the Inward Light.

Over the years, in the private reports of Friends, we hear Sarah’s words ringing out in Yearly Meeting after Yearly Meeting. In 1807 she ‘was led particularly to address those who were as the great men in the world, querying in a very emphatic manner whether they were not more solicitous to have their heads stored with knowledge and their purses with money than they were to have their hearts replenished with heavenly treasure.’ 

Joseph John Gurney

By 1836 the Evangelical party had become dominant in the Society of Friends in Britain and the Quietist, traditional cause seemed all but lost. Sarah was not silent however and YM in 1838 saw her, two years before her death, ill but still determined to repeat her message of warning one last time. John Southall describes her as ‘altered in appearance, she is much, very much thinner, but her eye has its wonted brightness, her manner is lively and her voice good, her address was perhaps even more than usually plain spoken, though it was not such as ought to have given offence to a single human being.’ Doubtless some were offended, but Sarah Lynes Grubb was only being true to that call to the ministry which she had heard fifty years before. As she said at that last YM, ‘You may perhaps be thinking it is only a poor insignificant woman who is teling you what she thinks, and you will not receive it, but it is not the instrument but the power from which the words proceed that ought to be looked up to.’

Between Sarah Pim and Sarah Lynes comes Sarah Tuke. She was born in 1756 in York, the second of the five children of William Tuke (1732-1822) and his first wife Elizabeth Hoyland. When Sarah was four years old her mother died but when she was nine Esther Maud Tuke became her stepmother. She and her siblings always gratefully acknowledged Esther’s tenderness and care for them and the fact that she treated them no differently from her own three children. 

Sarah struggled when young with her natural vivacity of disposition but when she was sixteen she helped her step-mother to care for John Woolman, the American Quaker minister, in his last illness and his example of resignation and faith made a great impression on her mind. She long remembered his words to her, 'My child, thou seems very kind to me, a poor creature. The Lord will reward you for it.' Sarah first appeared in the ministry, after much hesitation and agonising, in 1779 at the age of twenty three and at once embarked upon extensive travels in the ministry which continued for the rest of her life. At first she accompanied her step-mother into Westmoreland and Cumberland and in the same year went with another relation to Cheshire and Lancashire.

In 1782 Sarah married Robert Grubb [1743-1797] of Clonmel, who had lived for some time in York, and they settled at the village of Foston ten miles away, but almost at once Sarah left on a visit to Scotland with Mary Proud of Hull which she found 'a painful exercising time.' On her return Sarah settled into a domestic life which involved frequent travel, sometimes with her husband, but also with female companions. In 1786 Sarah accompanied Rebecca Jones of Philadelphia on a visit to Wales  “rendered arduous by the ruggedness of the country and the road being partly over the tops of very high mountains.” Next year Sarah went, again with Rebecca, to Ireland, but she also found time to act as Clerk of the Womens Yearly Meeting in London in both 1786 and 1787. During this time Sarah began to feel called to leave the security of York and her beloved family and in 1787 she and Robert moved to Ireland and settled near Clonmel. In 1788 they went with other Friends, including George and Sarah Dillwyn of America, to Holland, Germany and France.

Although she had no children of her own, Sarah had decided views on education. She believed that children needed both discipline and respect and should be taught useful skills. In York in 1784 she had helped her step-mother to establish a school for girls and when they moved to Ireland she and Robert founded Suir Island girls’ school at their home on the same principles.

There was little time for Sarah to rest. In 1790 she and Robert, together with the Dillwyns, went again to travel in the ministry on the continent, in France, Holland, Pyrmont and Germany. When Sarah returned she was physically exhausted and ill but, pausing only to visit her family in York for a few days, she went straight to Dublin for the Ireland Half-Yearly Meeting to report on her travels to Friends. Returning home still weak and unwell she stayed only two weeks before travelling to Cork to attend Quarterly Meeting. Here she collapsed and after ten days illness died on 8th December 1790 at the age of thirty four. After her untimely death several of her writings, on religion and education as well as her journal, were published.  

How did their contemporaries distinguish between the three Sarahs? They did not add their original surnames as I have but instead used a different convention. If two women had the same first name and one had a second name they were known by that, so Priscilla Hannah Gurney (1757-1828) was so called to distinguish her from another Priscilla Gurney who was also a minister. If either woman was married however then her distinguishing second name became that of her husband, so Sarah Tuke became Sarah R Grubb or Sally Robert and Sarah Lynes was called Sarah J Grubb or Sally John. In the same way Elizabeth Fry is sometimes referred to as Elizabeth J Fry to distinguish her from another contemporary Elizabeth Fry. Occasionally a Quaker man would also change his name to distinguish himself from a namesake. When Elizabeth Fry's brother Joseph Gurney began working for the family bank at the age of seventeen he added John to his name to distinguish himself from his uncle Joseph, a senior partner, becoming known as J.J. Gurney.

The three Sarah Grubbs had much in common as well as their names. A dedication to the Quaker ministry, an interest in education and residence in Ireland, in particular Clonmel, also linked them together.

Quaker Alphabet Week 11 - F for Ruth Follows

Basket makers in 20th century Castle Donnington

Ruth Follows was born on 7 January 1718 in Weston, Nottinghamshire, the sixth of the seven children of  Quaker parents, Richard Alcock (d. 1757), and his wife Ruth (c.1687-1738). Although brought up as a quaker, Ruth was thrown off balance for a while after her mother’s death. As she puts it, 'I left her counsel behind me, trod her testimony under my feet and took a large swing at vanity’ but soon realised her fault and returned to the fold. Her reformation was aided by her marriage, aged about 23, to George Follows (c1717-1803), who she calls ‘a young man far more worthy than myself’. They lived in Castle Donnington, Leicestershire where together they struggled to gain a basic living at George’s trade of making baskets out of osiers (rushes) and Ruth gave birth to four sons.  

A family works at stripping osiers

Gradually it became clear to Ruth that she was being called to become a Quaker recorded  minister, as her mother had been before her. She struggled against this conviction both because her children were still young and because she knew that few working-class Quakers of very limited means like herself travelled in the ministry, but eventually she accepted the responsibility at the age of thirty.

Osier basket

For much of the next forty years Ruth travelled extensively throughout Great Britain, often leaving her children in the care of her always supportive husband and writing long and affectionate letters home. She usually travelled with younger women ministers who derived much support from her company. In 1761-2 and again in 1782-3 she visited Ireland and was particularly troubled by what she saw as Friends’ excessive worldliness there.

Ruth’s ministry sometimes lay in silence, directing those who came to hear her back within themselves to dependence on Christ the Inward teacher rather than on human ministry. On other occasions, when she perceived a fault, Ruth spoke out as ‘a sharp instrument in the Lord’s hand’, although she was always encouraging to the faithful.  

18th century Newfoundland

Two of Ruth’s sons, George (1742-1766) and Joseph (1751-1809), gave her considerable cause for anxiety by their youthful wildness, keeping bad company and drinking heavily, but both reformed under the steadying influence of Friends. Joseph worked for three years for a Quaker master in Newfoundland and on his return to England settled down in the family business. He became a Quaker minister himself and in 1793 accompanied his mother on one of her last journeys in the ministry.

Castle Donnington in the 19th century

Towards the end of her life Ruth became increasingly infirm and after a journey to Yearly Meeting in London in 1795 remained at home, receiving visiting Friends and faithfully attending local meetings. She had a wide network of friends who valued her and her name is often mentioned in their correspondence and journals. James Jenkins, not known for his charitable judgments on his fellow Quakers, described Ruth as ‘highly esteemed both as a minister and as a woman extremely amiable in private life'. He also says that she ‘was one of the most musical preachers I have ever heard - even in old age she used to exalt a clear strong voice into strains of delightful melody.’ George Follows died in 1803 and five years later, on 3 April 1808, Ruth died, aged 90, and was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Castle Donnington.

Ruth Follows’ spiritual autobiography and letters were assembled after her death and published twenty years later, in 1829, at the instigation of those who still valued her memory as Memoirs of Ruth Follows. Extracts from this book and some unpublished letters can be found in the anthology Strength in Weakness.